Mad Barbara

by Warwick Deeping

XXXVIII

John Gore had grim things on his mind that night, and a task before him that he did not wish to come to Barbara’s knowledge. She, poor child, with Mrs. Winnie’s food in her lap—food such as she had not touched for many a day—would have had no heart to eat and drink had she known of the dead on those dark stairs. He wished to spare her the horror of it, for the night had been gross and violent enough, and after all the suffering she had borne he was afraid for her in body and mind.

Taking the lantern, he made his way to the tower, closing the door in the passage that led from the kitchen into the ruined hall. Nance Pinniger lay dead upon the stairs, her mouth open and her hands clinched over the place where the sword had entered, and John Gore shuddered as he looked at her, wishing, for the sake of her womanhood, that he had held his hand. He went higher to where the man lay half doubled against the wall, the cloth that covered his face caught between his teeth in the death spasm. The fellow’s bulk seemed a veritable barrier against burial, and John Gore, hardened as he had been to the rough life of the sea, felt a vital horror of this huddled mass that seemed gross and gluttonous even in death.

Remembering the open pit, he went and held the lantern over the black hole in the floor, but was still unable to fathom its depth. Here was a ready vault if he could but get the dead to it—a pit that seemed to scoff with open mouth at those whom Fate had cheated.

To make short work of a grisly business, even as John Gore did, he took one of the sheets from Barbara’s room, and knotting it about the dead man’s ankles, contrived, thanks to his great strength, to draw the body to the edge of the pit. Unknotting the sheet, he turned Simon Pinniger down into the darkness, handling him daintily so as not to foul his own clothes. For the woman he underwent a like labor, letting the bloody sheet slip after her, and turning the flag down into its place. He had the feelings of a man who had played scavenger to a headsman upon a scaffold, and he still seemed to hear the soughing rush of wind from the pit as those dead things went to their last resting-place in the secret depths of Thorn.

When he had drawn the rope up from the window, unknotted and coiled it, and gathered tools, pistols, and his broken sword, he searched for and found Barbara’s red Bible, and retreated, with all his gear, out of the tower. The memory of the place made his gorge rise, and he was glad of the night air and the light of the moon. He drove his feet through some clumps of grass and weeds, yearning to wipe off every stain of the place before taking this child out into the world.

In the kitchen he found Barbara warming herself before the fire, and the spirit of maidenhood in her, the smooth, virginal contours of her face and figure, filled him with a sense of freshness and of awe. He saw the play and counterplay of shadow and light within her eyes, and held it to be witchcraft miraculously pure and sweet, bringing down God to him, and beauty, and clean living. Somehow he felt that night that he could not go close to her, that he had a butcher’s hands, and that it would be impiety to touch a thing so goodly. Moreover, there was a delight in holding a little aloof from her, in watching all her half-coy sweetness, so fresh and new to him in her altered womanhood. He could mark the shade and sunlight in her glances, the passing gleams of color on her face, the birth of that dear consciousness that strove to smother that which could not be wholly hid.

“How long you have been, John!”

“I had dropped some of my things and had to hunt for them. I found your book.”

He gave it to her, and, throwing the ropes and tools upon the table, he busied himself with reloading the pistol that had sent its lead into Simon Pinniger’s body, having a small ivory powder-horn and a bag of bullets with him.